Notes on the nomenclature of some grasses

In a former article 1) many new combinations and critical observations were published on various grasses all over the world. New investigations in critical genera together with the study of the existing literature made it necessary to accept various other arrangements in this important family. The old system of Bentham, once the basis for a total review, is now more and more modified and many tribes are purified and more exactly limited. The most recent system we have at the moment, is Hubbard’s treatment of this family in the work of Hutchinson: The families of flowering plants. Vol. II. Monocotyledons. The grasses are divided there into 26 tribes. We have here the great advantage that aberrant genera, which are not easy to place into one of the formerly accepted tribes, are given as representatives of distinct new tribes. The curious tropical genus Streptochaeta f.i. constitutes the tribe of the Streptochaeteae. It is quite acceptable that tribes may consist of but one genus, especially when such a genus is a totally deviating one and cannot be inserted into one of the already existing ones. Such tribes are f.i. the Nardeae with the only northern genus Nardus, and the Mediterranean tribe of the Lygeeae with the only genus Lygeum, one of the Esparto grasses. It is therefore no wonder that Hubbard creates a new tribe, the Anomochloeae, for one of the most curious tropical grasses of the world. This tribe is represented by only one species, the Anomochloa marantoidea Brongn., with a very curious habit and no evident affinities with any other grass. The same can be said of the aberrant genus Pariana, the only member of the tribe of the Parianeae. The most valuable advance is the creation by Hubbard of the tribe of the Thysanolaeneae with as the only member our well-known tropical and subtropical East-Asiatic genus Thysanolaena. Although this new subdivision of the family of the grasses gives us a great satisfaction, it does not mean that the system is complete and certainly many changes are to be given before we will have a totally correct and acceptable classification of the grasses.